GUEST ADVICE

First off, thank you again for being a guest on Long Riders Radio. We want to make sure you sound as good as possible when you are on the show. With that in mind, we've come up with the following:

In general

Find a quiet spot. You'd be amazed what ambient noises your phone will pick up. Chances are if you can hear it, its being picked up on the recording.

Put your mobile phone on vibrate and move it away from the microphone of whatever you are talking on. (Assuming, of course, we're not talking to you on your mobile phone.) Unfortunately, most beeps, boops and even the vibrations get picked up on the recording amazingly well.

Relax! This isn't live. If you mess up an answer, just stop, compose yourself and answer the question again from the beginning. We'll cut out the mistake.

Just in case its not obvious, our entire conversation will be recorded from the moment you answer the call. I hope this is completely obvious since we're doing an interview for a podcast, but on the off chance you didn't realize this, consider yourself notified!

If we're calling you on the phone

Use a land line if possible. Mobile phones just don't sound as good as a hard wired phone.

Make sure you've given us the number of the phone you'd like to be contacted on.

If we're calling you via Skype/Google Voice/Facetime etc.

Use headphones - While most of these services are pretty good about making sure the other end of the conversation isn't transmitted back over the line, its not perfect. Using headphones completely eliminates this.

Use a hardwired internet connection, if possible. If you have to use wireless, set up near your wireless access point to ensure a strong connection.

Ask your family/roommates/friends to let you have the internet connection to yourself during the call. If little Timmy fires up Netflix to watch Toy Story, we're likely to start getting a lot of latency in the conversation.

Use an external microphone, if possible. Even the one that came with your iPhone is better than what's in your computer.

Close all programs, except what you need for the call. This eliminates the possibly of your computer making a notification sound during the call.